


floating with past ghosts

by andibeth82



Category: Lost
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Flash Sideways 'Verse, Flashbacks, Series Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-25
Updated: 2012-10-25
Packaged: 2017-11-17 00:48:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things that never happened, because shit went to hell and she died, and then he died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	floating with past ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Sideways verse, post vending machine awakenings but pre-church times - essentially, mapping out strange relationships in a strange world. James and Juliet playing parents to David because in my version, that happened. (It's all canon, anyway.)

He writes down the words and puts them in his pocket, she does the same and on lined graphs  
  
(it reminds her of the better days, paper and pen and a notebook full of work-ups.)  
  
They stand together with linked hands, smile when they say I do  
and later in a darkened room they uncurl rolls of paper and read aloud  
  
no witnesses to speak of except the bed and the desk and the bottle of rum and it _almost_ feels like the place she once called home.  
  
  
Almost.  
  
  
  
  
They make the decision while lying in bed, hands tangling in hair and arms over legs.  
  
“Not Jasper.”  
  
“Not Miami."  
  
(It had been easy enough to cross off the first two, Los Angeles was soon added to the list because they needed a new start, away from things that could be classified as memories.)  
  
“Boston?”  
  
“Too far.” She reaches for his face, fingers grazing the side of his chin. “It would take days to drive.”  
  
“Who says we have to drive?” He asks the question before looking at her face, then lets out a breath.  
  
“Right.”  
  
Juliet drops her hand, letting it trail across the curve of the covers. She finds the inside of his thigh and thinks about how sometimes it's all so _weird_ , places and things and situations they talked about once before, when everything seemed like it was always going to be perfect.  
  
Things that never happened, because shit went to hell and she died, and then he died.  
  
“Texas?"  
  
“Too big.”  
  
A pause, and then silence except for shared breathing (he made the mistake once of asking about Portland _not in Portland, never Portland_ and every answer since then has been more tentative than the last.)  
  
“Seattle?”  
  
He turns his head at her words, brow furrowed and forehead creasing with multiplying lines.  
  
“What’s so great about Seattle?”  
  
She shrugs because she doesn’t know what’s made her say it and his fingers tighten around her wrist.  
  
  
+  
  
  
They tell David the next day and the boy shifts his gaze as narrowed eyes dart between the two individuals in front of him, Juliet’s sad grin and James’ pained face.  
  
David, who didn’t understand why he suddenly had a new father.  
  
David, who didn’t understand why his mother now shared a bed with a seemingly complete stranger.  
  
 _So much you don’t know._ Juliet resists the urge to ruffle the unruly ends of his hair. _Jack had unruly hair like that._ She wants so badly to tell him but she doesn’t really know how this works, it’s complicated and right now it’s something that seems best left alone.  
  
“I’ll have to move schools.”  
  
“For a little while.” Bare feet press into the tiled floor and David puts his hands on the table.  
  
“Is it because of him?”  
  
She looks up and James runs a hand through hair that’s becoming a little too messy. _LaFleur had longer hair like that._ She closes her eyes and turns back to her son.  
  
 _Her son._  
  
“It’s because of us.”  
  
  
+  
  
  
In the morning he makes coffee and in the afternoon she does the school run while the time in between is theirs alone, books stretched out over legs on the porch swing and smiles in the wake of playful barbs that feel like the old days. At night they sleep pressed into each others bodies with his arms wrapped around her waist, fingers against the skin of her hips and her hands on his back.  
  
Sometimes (most times) he thinks of that night in the hospital. Other times he thinks of the nights when the past and present and future became too much to handle in a small house with yellow walls and big windows.  
  
But mostly, he thinks about how he never wants her to be alone again.  
  
  
+  
  
  
Between themselves they don’t have much – she was never one for material possessions and he didn’t take much from his bachelor pad when he moved in. They’re packed in less than two hours and on the road in less than one, James steering the car through winding streets with one hand while the other firmly grasps the curve of her knee. Petula Clark sings about going downtown on the radio and she wonders where this will all end up, if there’s even an end of the road or if this is something that’s going to go on forever, destination unknown.  
  
 _(Speed past one of the smaller towns outside the California border, population 70.)_  
  
If David thinks it’s strange that the two adults in front of him won’t let go of each other, he doesn’t say anything.  
  
  
+  
  
  
 _Night one in the motel just off of the highway, room 284._ He tosses, turns, eventually wakes in a cold sweat and when she wakes herself she finds him at the foot of the bed, the television on mute and the flickering black and white of the 3am movie casting shadows on the walls.

“Sorry.” He turns, and in the dark she can see the heaviness clouding his eyes (she elects to say nothing.) “Didn’t wanna wake the kid.”  
  
Juliet smiles slightly, her gaze moving to the floor where David sleeps soundly on a cushion of pillows and blankets. “S’okay. He’s fine…sleeps through anything, you know. Slept through an earthquake once.” _Five, he was only five, it was before the divorce and that night Jack had slept in his bedroom just because._  
  
“Yeah.” James pauses, shaking his head. “It’s just…I see it. All the time. Even though you’re here, I still see it." He falls silent then and she sits forward, arms wrapping from behind as she presses her face into the skin of his back.  
  
“I know.”  
  
She wishes it wasn't like this, had foolishly hoped that once they were together, once he spent enough time with her, that maybe the nightmares would stop.  
  
 _The man who used to close his eyes and see guns and screams now closes his eyes to see chains and metal._  
  
She should know better, because she still sees it, too.  
  
  
+  
  
  
They share breakfast at a local diner (he orders pancakes and she feels a little wistful because they always made pancakes on the weekends back then _back then_ ) while David plays with his fork, doesn’t say much except when they’re on the road and then it’s “change the radio, mom. I’m bored."  
  
The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, John Lennon _it’s like being stuck in the 70’s all over again_ and she wonders if he’s thinking the same thing, that this song was the one that was playing the night they had their first kiss or that song was the one that was playing when she threw him a birthday party he didn’t want.  
  
“He hates me,” James says later at another rest stop, and Juliet closes her eyes as she fishes for her keys.  
  
“He hates his father,” she reminds him, finally looking up. “You’re not Jack, you don't treat him like you didn’t care.” A lie (a little bit) because Jack hadn’t been that bad and maybe the divorce had been messy but her marriage hadn’t been horrible, not really, not what it was with Edmund.  
  
 _All things that seemed like years ago, as if they were parts of her life that never existed at all._  
  
“He’ll never get used to me.” James slips on his sunglasses and she manages a smile, linking her arm through his.  
  
“He will. I promise.” _Maybe._ “Just…give him some time. It’s not like we can tell him where this is all coming from.”  
  
 _It's not like we can tell him we're all dead._  
  
“Where _is_ this all coming from?”  
  
It’s the first time either of them have voiced the question out loud and Juliet looks at him, shakes her head, feels the pit in her stomach when she speaks.  
  
“I don’t know."  
  
  
+  
  
  
Four days later they’ve crossed California into Portland (she tries not to think about it) into Seattle, he stops the car at an overlook so they can stretch their legs.  
  
“We did this once, right?” and he’s not sure whether she means the part about sitting by the water or feeling like they don’t belong. He runs a hand through his hair.  
  
“Yeah. We did.”  
  
She smells of the present, of shampoo nicer than the DHARMA brands they used to order and of the musty interior of the Sedan but in his mind he still smells the past, jungle and sweat and pylons and rust from the motor pool. To their right, David is lying on the grass with his headphones, eyes closed. James wonders what he’s listening to.  
  
“I can’t figure out what’s going to happen,” she says finally, her voice thick with something that he can’t quite decipher. She wraps her arms around her knees. “Can’t even figure it the hell out.” The white caps of waves curl against a deep blue and it makes her think of submarines and outriggers, of last hopes disappearing beneath dark waters and a three person canoe. James rubs a finger against the bridge of his nose where his glasses have left a faint mark.  
  
“Ain’t a damn game show," he says tiredly, scuffing a foot into the ground. “Just another life we gotta go through.”  
  
 _I’ve already lived too many lives_. She leans into the space between his shoulder and neck, remembers nights in the hammock and sneaking behind the rec hall at midnight and the way she would fall asleep, sometimes like this, synced breathing with hands entwined.  
  
Then, contacts that felt safe and reassuring.  
  
Now, touches and movements that are reminders of everything that’s another stop on their journey (the one they don’t really know how to navigate.)  
  
“I still got your back.”  
  
Words she hasn’t heard since sometime in 1977 cause her to raise her head, eyes meeting two barely there dimples that press through the stubble of a newly grown beard. _Sawyer had stubble like that._ At her look, he shrugs. “Whatever happens, you know. Your back. I got it.”  
  
She moves closer, the wood of the bench creaks underneath her weight as she wraps an arm around his neck, closes her eyes against a world she still doesn’t know.  
  
Focuses on what she does know.  
  
Takes his hand.  
  
And returns the sentiment.


End file.
